Danielle Morrill

I am so jealous of you people!

I have been plotting for my dog ownership for over a year now, reading about different breeds. I have come back around full circle and I am certain that I want a Chinese Shar Pei. Yes, they are those “cute” wrinkly faced dogs. I know a lot of people think these adorable guys are ugly, and I have no idea why. They look like little lions. I love them. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that my family had one when I was growing up and she was really attached to me.

Something like this:

Update: I found a great breeder in Sequim, WA and she sent me tons of pictures of her dogs. He next litter isn’t for over a year, but I will be able to get on the list.

Last night we had my parents over for dinner and I wanted to make something good for dessert, and I also wanted to use my little mini blowtorch and ramekins, so I decided to brave creme brulee. I’d heard all sorts of stories about it not working out, so I was prepared to screw it up.

Making any kind of custard is very challenging, because you have to have the temperature of the heavy cream at just right when you combine it with the egg yolk and sugar mixture, or it will begin to cook the yolks - and all is lost. You also have to make sure to strain out any skins from the simmering cream, or you can get a lumpy consistency. Once the mixture is complete and poured into the ramekins, you set them into a baking pan of scalding hot water and then place the whole thing into the oven. The water regulates the temperature of the ramekins so that the top and bottom won’t cook faster than the center.

It is very important to take them out of the oven before they are entirely “done”, meaning while the centers still jiggle like gelatin, because the ramekin will hold sufficient heat to continue the baking process after they have been removed from the heat. Once you have the consistency you want (you should be able to slide a knife down the side and pull it out clean) you set the ramekins in a bed of ice water to stop the cooking process. After they have cooled to room temperature, they go into the refrigerator. The recipe calls for 8 hours to 2 days to set, and I am sure it would be very yummy and firm like that - but we didn’t have that kind of time. 3 hours later they came out of the oven, a thin coating of granulated sugar went on top, and we torched them to caramel perfection.

A note on the torch: you always want to keep that bad boy moving, or you get little parts that are burned instead of tasty.

Today I’ve been catching up with various “toys”:

RescueTime - added their data collector to another machine, so now I won’t have big gaps on the days where I work from home.

Time Machiner - sent various emails to myself in the future, and also to my husband for his birthday coming up. Haven’t sent one 5 years in the future yet, but I probably will soon.

Mint - finally sat down to take a long hard look at this product, to decide if it might be how I want to manage our household finances going forward. The idea that it is always in sync (unlike Microsoft Money) is very compelling. So far, because we are Bank of American customers in Washington State (where they merged with Seafirst but never really merged their systems) this has sucked for me so far. This isn’t Mint’s fault, of course, but highlights how hard it is to create a quick set up experience.

Today was a really great day at work - celebration of our latest release of Whrrl this morning.

First off, every single meal was brought to the office. There were Top Pot Donuts for breakfast to celebrate the release, pizza from a company we work with for lunch, the yummy weekly French picnic in the app shack (red wine) and cupcakes that Emily made (and even let me frost a few!) and then a happy hour (more red wine) to catch up with the folks who have been traveling this week. There is a cute picture on the Pelago blog of the picnic.

Second, it SNOWED today!! It was so pretty watching the flakes float down past the window for a few hours. It has been very strange weather this week.

Finally, but certainly not least - Whrrl was mentioned on Page A1 of the Wall Street Journal!!

When I worked for Expeditors, a book circulating through management called Broken Windows Broken Business was very popular. It talks about how making sure to fix mistakes and problems at the detail level will lead to greater overall success, using the clean up of New York city as an example. Broken Windows is more than just a metaphor, in New York it was quite literal - areas with real broken windows invited break-ins, graffiti, and a rise in other sorts of crimes.

I am thinking about this today as I diligently work on fixing all sorts of little tiny data bugs. These are things that our beloved users might not even notice 95% of the time, but nevertheless I think it is just so important not to let these details slip. I look at local search service Citysearch, and see such a clear example of broken windows: listings for restaurants with data that has never been cleaned, or places that have closed years ago, and duplicate places. Another broken window is obnoxiously poor search relevance featuring paid ad placement. The site feels like a 1990s ghost town to me.

Fixing the little things can be tedious and time consuming, but I find myself so satisfied in knowing that I am helping (in my own small way) to create a user experience that doesn’t have those broken windows so common of content-driven websites. Since I work on the data and content side of the product, and not in software development, I love any part of my job that can actually touch the end user experience (since so much of what we do is important, but behind the scenes). I think Wikipedia is extremely admirable, in that they are a site depending solely on user generated content, and still manage to resolve debates between authors and present clear, grammatically correct and factually accurate entries. I trust Wikipedia implicitly, because I know they have a strong process in place to avoid broken windows in their product. I believe tht by working hard to eliminate tiny data bugs, I am working towards creating this same implicit trust in our content, for users of Whrrl.

At Expeditors, “attention to detail” was one of the cultural attributes , and I think this goes hand in hand with integrity (another cultural attribute). There were people who I had the good fortunate to work with who were so incredible, so reliable, so diligent in so many levels of the organization. Whether it was manual labor in the warehouse, data entry in the branch offices, or management at the regional and corporate levels, they were people who had this “broken windows” mentality ingrained into their very souls. This is something I want to take with me to Pelago and continue to cultivate in myself; I think it is highly admirable attribute to possess. I think you can be highly productive and intelligent and not possess this attribute, because it truly is a skill. There are plenty of messy geniuses and I couldn’t live without them, but I know that at least for me knowing the details are correct on a regular basis leads me to trust in myself and my judgment more completely and reduces my stress level significantly.

Buy this book at Amazon.com: Broken Windows, Broken Business: How the Smallest Remedies Reap the Biggest Rewards by Michael Levine